report of 17th meeting of iucn ssc plant conservation sub...
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Report of 17th Meeting of IUCN SSC Plant Conservation Sub-committee (20th and 21st
September 2014, Paris, France) The IUCN SSC Plant Conservation Sub-Committee, chaired by John Donaldson, held its seventeenth meeting in Paris in September 2014. Input prior to the Red List Committee meeting (held in Cambridge, UK, 12-14 May 2014) was requested from all PCSC members and from Plant Specialist Groups to develop an information document submitted by the IUCN Plant Sub-Committee to Red List Committee. The purpose of this information document was to provide recommendations to speed up inclusion of the plants on to the IUCN Red List. A report back from Red List Committee to Plant Sub Committee has been compiled by Domitilla Raimondo and Alan Paton. The feedback was presented at the PCSC meeting by Domitilla Raimondo but the focus was on discussions toward actions and not on reporting per se. The meeting followed the agenda in Annex 1. The key decisions and action points agreed at the meeting are listed in the table below. Please, note that these minutes of the meeting are more “reminder notes and action points” rather than strict compilation of the conversation. Participants at the meeting:
o Members of PCSC: John Donaldson, [email protected]; William Baker, [email protected]; Bertrand De Montmollin, [email protected]; Hector Hernandez-Macias, [email protected]; Danna Leaman, [email protected]; Nigel Maxted, [email protected]; Elizabeth Radford, [email protected]; Domitilla Raimondo, [email protected]; George Schatz, [email protected]; Alan Tye, [email protected].
o Other Commission Members/Guests/Observers/Representatives of IUCN SSC Sub-Committees: Simon Stuart, [email protected]; Vololoniaina Jeannoda, [email protected]; Steven Bachman, [email protected]; Gustavo Martinelli, [email protected].
o IUCN staff: Craig Hilton-Taylor, [email protected]; Olivier Hasinger, [email protected]; and Annabelle Cuttelod, [email protected] for a KBA update via skype
Apologies from PCSC members who were unable to attend: o Ehsan Dulloo, [email protected] o Alan Paton, [email protected] o Mike Fay, [email protected]
PCSC meeting agenda items
Decisions/actions People responsible
Timeline Related document
2a Batch importer: funding for batch import into SIS was approved (50’000 USD allocated from the funding generated through IBAT); new functionality to enable any IUCN-compliant assessments from external database (e.g. South African and Brazilian assessments) to be automatically fed into SIS for final review and processing for publication on the IUCN Red List website.
Red List Unit (Ackbar Joolia and Craig Hilton Taylor)
January 2015 Annex 2 and 3
2a Once the batch importer will be available, encourage/ insist with other countries (e.g. Ecuador, Spain, France, Colombia) to submit their assessments of endemic plant species (for the rationale, use the translation widgets). Alert Brazil and Ecuador when the batch importer will be ready
PCSC and RLU Mid 2015 Annex 2 and 3
2a Minimum documentation view: develop a view in SIS that only shows fields required by the minimum documentation standards
Red List Unit (Ackbar Joolia and Craig Hilton Taylor)
December 2014
Annex 2 and 3
2a Languages of IUCN Red List assessments : accept assessments conducted in the official IUCN languages (English, French and Spanish) as well as in languages of some Megadiverse countries (Portuguese). Rationale for the assessments must be available in English in any case.
Craig (RLU) To be define by Craig
Annex 2 and 3
2a Dealing with the backlog of plant assessments: budget the needs to get the backlog of plant assessments cleared/resolved, develop workplans (budget) and solutions for each of these datasets, priority for datasets that are close to the minimum documentation standards. Important to find a way to allocate some of the fund generated through the Red List@50 fundraising events and to be able to do further joint fundraising with SGs chairs.
Chairs of the IUCN SSC Plant SG, RLAs together with RLU
ASAP Annex 2 and 3
2a Dealing with the backlog of plant assessments: Madagascar Plant assessments: 1,000 Madagascan plant assessments will be published on the IUCN Red List website, South Africa Plant SG has offered to assist with Red List training in Madagascar and with lesson sharing for doing assessments in the megadiverse country context.
MPSG, GSP, Kew and MBG (maybe help of SASG)
by the end of 2015
Annex 2 and 3
2a Dealing with the backlog of plant assessments: develop a workplan and budget for the East African Plant assessments to get them publish on the RL website.
Craig and Henk ASAP Annex 2 and 3
2b Review of priorities for Plant assessments: develop an information document (or an article) that outline the current priorities for Plant assessments, including the principles for priority setting, then adapt the Red List Strategic Plan accordingly and the Species Strategic Plan and provide rationale for new priorities
PCSC members with the help of SSC network support team
March 2015 Annex 4
2b Review of priorities for Plant assessments / The Sample Red List Index: write a formal letter to the CBD to work with the secretariat to mobilize the countries to develop their national red lists and get involved in developing the SRLI approach (provide a set of solutions). Decide on the content of the letter and talk to Jane Smart about what to do. Several points must be emphasized: the importance of the SRLI for the monitoring the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, importance for the countries to be able to report on their achievements, the financial need to achieve to this.
PCSC, IUCN and the Red List Partners
ASAP Annex 4
2c Plant useful for human wellbeing / P4P: different way now to deliver on P4P (joint fundraising effort with the four priority P4P
GSP and SSC Plant SGs
from now on until we reach our targets
NA
SGs/ the batch importer/ identify good quality assessment from the South African Database that fits within the P4P definition)/ quick redlisting of least concern palms and other priority taxonomic groups (CWR, timber and medicinal plants) / discuss with Jane Smart about approaching the EC for funding P4P (Olivier)
4 Conservation planning for plant areas: inform the PCSC and all plant SGs when the KBA consultation will start (next Thursday), then Liz will coordinate the response for the PCSC. For the rest of the Plant SGs, Olivier will encourage them to participate to the consultation
Liz Radford and PCSC members
By the end of November
Annex 5
4 Conservation planning for plant areas: the MAVA funded project, called “Conserving wild plants and habitats for people in the south and east Mediterranean”, started in September 2014. Liz Radford and Bertrand de Montmollin to keep IUCN GSP and PCSC members informed about the outcomes.
Liz Radford and Bertrand de Montmollin
At the next PCSC meeting
Annex 6
5 Sustainable use and links to the SuLi SG: talk to the SuLi SG to find out how they can interact/interface with Plant SGs // Best practices on plant use// brainstorm on what type of uses of plant species need more attention from the SSC (jointly the Plant SGs with the SuLi SG): e.g firewood/plants used to feed animals. Survey monkey/ develop the question (Simon and the others listed below)/ make the link with People and Plants international (check website)
Olivier and the four P4P SGs. On the side of SuLi: Rosie
ASAP NA
6,7,8,9 Species Information Service and Union Portal: send to all the Plant SGs an update that outlines of all new recent developments on SIS, including about the Red List online course.
Olivier Hasinger with support from the RLU
ASAP Annex 7
10a Approval of new SGs and RLAs: New Caledonia Plant RLA proposal submitted to the PCSC members before the PCSC meeting and approved at the meeting.
PCSC Done Annex 8
10b Gap analysis on coverage of the Plant SSC SGs and RLAs: Kew SRLI group to do a gap analysis on where there are gaps in the coverage of the Plant SSC SGs and RLAs
Steve Bachman and colleagues
PCSC next meeting
NA
10c Overlapping mandates within the SSC Plant SGs: Create a box in SIS that ask if the assessor have made reasonable effort to consult with other SGs and RLAs that have expertise on the species. Reword the paragraph in the rules of procedure to give the responsibility to the SG to make sure that they have consulted with the relevant expert in other SGs (exception for large projects)
RLU next quadriennium
NA
13 The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (national red lists vs the IUCN global Red list): e.g. National Red List of Indonesia supported by RLU. Such process has been
RLU and PCSC Ongoing Annex 9
identified as a way forward toward the implementation of the target 2 of GSPC and an example to be replicated (support from the IUCN RLU to help develop national red list have shown to be a very efficient way to support the implementation of the GSPC target 2). Another action would be to put in place a similar process for Central Africa. Resurrect the Central Africa RLA by getting in touch with Jean-Michel Oana.
14 Conservation planning for plant areas (species management plans for plants; links with SCPSC): get in contact to explore the possibility of developing species management plan for plant species (never done with Mark Stanley Price so far, only for animals so far) // Send a general email to all Plant SGs to get in touch with Mark Stanley Price, including background information and examples of species management plans (link to their webpage on IUCN website).
PCSC and IUCN SSC Plant SGs (maybe with Palms SG or the Mangroves SG) // Olivier to send the email to the Plant SGs
ASAP Annex 10
14 Conservation planning for plant areas (species management plans for plants; links with SCPSC): put in contact Gustavo Martinelli and Mark Stanley Price to explore how they could work together on Brazilian Plant Species management plans
Nigel Maxted ASAP Annex 10
16 Opportunities of funding for the Plant SGs: send an email to all Plant SGs with the link to the MBZ fund and encourage them to apply for grants
Olivier Hasinger ASAP NA
16 Opportunities of funding for the Plant SGs: Botanical garden and Plants SGs twining: look at a more formalized support// it is not the right time now
NA NA NA
17 Promoting plant work in IUCN and the SSC: Plant species conservation award (David Given)/set up a nominating committee to deliver the price in late 2015
Danna Leaman, Mike Fay, Hector Hernández, Craig Hilton Taylor, Alan Tye
late 2015 or January 2016
NA
17 Promoting plant work in IUCN and the SSC: Send an email to PCSC members listing all the main current key initiative in IUCN (green list, natural framework governance, IPBES, ...) so they can get involved on case by case depending in which plant expertise is most needed and also depending on the motivation of each individuals/PCSC members
Olivier Hasinger ASAP NA
Annex 1
PLANT CONSERVATION SUB-COMMITTEE MEETING
20th and 21st September 2014
17th meeting of the IUCN SCC PCSC
Venue : Palais de la Porte Dorée - Aquarium Tropical
293, avenue Daumesnil 75012 Paris
Meeting room : salle Haardt
DRAFT AGENDA Participants:
1. PCSC members: John Donaldson, [email protected]; William Baker, [email protected]; Bertrand De Montmollin, [email protected]; Ehsan Dulloo, [email protected]; Hector Hernandez-Macias, [email protected]; Danna Leaman, [email protected]; Nigel Maxted, [email protected]; Elizabeth Radford, [email protected]; Domitilla Raimondo, [email protected]; George Schatz, [email protected]; Alan Tye, [email protected].
2. PCSC members/apologies: Alan Paton, [email protected]; Mike Fay, [email protected]. 3. Other Commission Members/Guests/Observers: Simon Stuart, [email protected];
Vololoniaina Jeannoda, [email protected]; Steven Bachman, [email protected]; Gustavo Martinelli, [email protected].
4. IUCN Staff: Craig Hilton-Taylor, [email protected]; Olivier Hasinger, [email protected]; and Annabelle Cuttelod, [email protected] for a KBA update via skype (TBC).
Three key objectives for the 17th PCSC meeting:
• Agree on key priorities for the PCSC for the remainder of the current quadriennium. • Development of further plans to advance the priority global plant assessments (Plants
for People and other priorities). Please see the IUCN SSC Species Strategic Plan. • Agree on a way forward for policy work and the implementation of the CBD Global
Strategy for Plant Conservation. DAY 1 Start at Allocation of time Topic 10:00 15 min Meeting at the entrance of Aquarium where we should get
the badges to access the Haardt meeting room 10:15 15 min 1. Welcome and introduction to meeting. Self
introductions of participants. Adoption of the agenda and the minutes of the last PCSC meeting (PCSC 16). Approach to minutes taking.
10:30 120 min (including a coffee break in the middle of this session)
2. Plant Red List Assessments (PART 1): a) Feedback from the Red list Steering Committee
on the issues raised in the report from the PCSC / Speeding up the publication of plant assessments
b) Review priorities in the IUCN SSC Species Strategic Plan and global targets for plant conservation assessments, including a discussion on the Sampled Red List Index approach its current status and sustainability issues.
c) Update on the Plants For People (P4P) project: background to the project, constraints and challenges, including funding issues
12:30 90 min Lunch and open discussions
14:00 60 min 3. Plant Red List Assessments (PART 2): to pick up on items not completed in the morning and refine decisions.
15:00 60 min 4. Conservation planning for plant areas (PART 1): Important Plant Areas as well as the IUCN/SSC Key Biodiversity Areas standard. Annabelle Cuttelod to join by skype (TBC)
16:00 15 min Coffee 16:15 45 min 5. Sustainable use and links to SULi (Sustainable Use
and Livelihoods), including a discussion on the joint WHO, IUCN, TRAFFIC and WWF guidelines on the conservation of medicinal plants.
17:00 60 min 6. Species Information Service: a) SIS: Importing external datasets (batch importer) b) SIS: Integrity checker demonstration c) SIS: National use d) SIS: Use and Trade modules & Livelihoods
module 7. Online Red List training course 8. Website/turning the Red list into an online journal: DOI
progress 9. The Union Portal
18:00 30 min 10. Approval of new SGs and RLAs a) New Caledonia Plant RLA b) Gap analysis on coverage of the Plant SSC SGs
and RLAs c) Overlapping mandates within the SSC Plant SGs
18:30 15 min 11. Summary for the day
DAY 2 Start at Allocation of time Topic 10:00 5 min Meeting at the entrance of Aquarium where we should get
the badges to access the Haardt meeting room 10:05 55 min 12. Plant Red List Assessments (PART 3): to pick up on
items not completed on day 1 and refine decisions 11:00 45 min 13. The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation 11:45 15 min Coffee 12:00 30 min 14. Conservation planning for plant areas (PART 2):
Species management plans for plants: links with the Conservation Planning Sub-Committee (chaired by Mark Stanley Price)
13:00 90 min Lunch and open discussions 14:30 90 min 15. Plants for People Project: next steps toward
implementation 16:00 15 min Coffee 16:45 60 min 16. Other opportunities of funding for the Plant SGs:
a) Botanical garden and Plants SGs twining: look at a more formalized support.
b) Branding: How do we approach BGs to encourage them to develop branding?
c) Any other funding opportunities 17:45 45 min 17. Promoting plant work in IUCN and the SSC: going
beyond Red Listing, what are the priorities, catalytic and transformative role of the PCSC (synapsing role)
18:30 15 min 18. Summary for the day
Annex 2
Recommendations to speed up inclusion of the plants on to the IUCN Red List Information document submitted by the IUCN Plant Sub-Committee to Red List Committee Back ground Through the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), botanists around the world have pledged to work towards a comprehensive assessment of all plant species by 2020 (Target 2 of the GSPC). Significant progress has been made towards assessing plant species globally over the past decade. For example, South Africa, a megadiverse country with over 20 000 plant taxa, completed a comprehensive Red List assessment of all 20 000 plants in 2009 using the IUCN 3.1 Red List Categories and Criteria. At least, 5000 of these assessments meet the IUCN’s minimum documentation requirements and have been available to the IUCN since 2010 for inclusion on the Global List. Brazil, the world’s most biodiverse country, completed 6000 assessments in 2013 in Portuguese and is ready to submit these to the IUCN. KEW is in the process of completing assessments of the 7000 plant species included on the Sampled Red List Index, while many of these are already on the IUCN Global List, c. 1000 remain to be included. This means that c. 12 000 plant assessments are available for immediate inclusion on the IUCN Red List and many more will become available in the next few years. However, the completion of plant assessments does not mean that they will easily be accepted and published on the IUCN Red List unless specific plans are made to deal with plant assessments. Many of the above assessment projects have been conducted in independent Red Listing databases and not in the Species Information Service (SIS), an online assessment tool developed by the IUCN. Since 2010, only assessments conducted using SIS have been processed by the IUCN and thus reflected on the Red List. In order, for the IUCN Red List to represent the progress made with red listing plants an alternative approach for including assessment done in independent databases urgently needs to be prioritised. Despite the progress that has already been made to date with plant Red Listing, less than 20% of the world’s plants have been assessed and much work remains to be done in the next 6 years if progress is to be made towards the global GSPC target of a comprehensive assessment for all plants (Target 2). Many countries willing to contribute their share towards the global GSPC target do not have their own systems for completing and publishing their conservation assessments, and are reliant on the IUCN’s system. This system, in its current capacity, is not ideal for the rapid and efficient assessment of plant species. For example 1452 assessments conducted for plants in East Africa over the past 5 years have been submitted to the IUCN either as word documents or been entered into the IUCN’s Species Information Service (SIS), only 35 % of these assessments have successfully been published onto the Global List. Many other examples exist of plant assessments that have been submitted to the IUCN but not published. Therefore the main stumbling block in the way of achieving target 2 of the GSPC is the IUCN system for processing assessments. This document outlines two specific areas of concern that botanists currently perceive: 1) Structure and functioning of IUCN’S Species Information Service 2) IUCN systems for processing assessments 1) Structure and functioning of IUCN’S Species Information Service
The below points outline how the current structure and functioning of SIS is not ideal for the assessment of plant species. 1.1. SIS does not allow for efficient, time-saving methods of data capturing. Efficiency is the most important requirement for completing assessments for large numbers of species. For plants, a large proportion of basic data required for Red List assessments is already held in external electronic datasets such as taxonomic databases or digitized specimen collections. These are typically held and maintained by national institutions, but internationally there are many initiatives for the collation of taxonomic checklists, such as Catalogue of Life/Species 2000. Entering such data manually, which is required by SIS, is highly inefficient and is the main reason that large conservation assessment projects for plants, e.g. those done by KEW, Brazil, China and South Africa, have to date been done in independent databases structured to automatically include such information. Solutions: i) Develop a stable body of data standards to facilitate bulk transfer of assessments from external data management systems into SIS, in a similar fashion to the way that GBIF uses Darwin Core.
ii) Develop processes to facilitate batch transfers of data from external datasets into SIS. While the IUCN has started developing a batch transfer system, resources are needed to speed up and complete this functionality in SIS. SIS makes use of multiple forms to capture data for assessments, to date there is no single view which includes only fields required to ensure that the information for the minimum documentation is captured. In order for Target 2 of the GSPC to be achieved, large numbers of assessments need to be conducted within a limited time. In order for this to be achieved only the minimum set of information needed to justify an assessment should be captured and time should not be wasted paging through many forms and capturing data that is not necessary for an assessment. Solution: Develop a view in SIS that shows only fields required by the minimum documentation standards. 1.2. User defined, custom queries of Red List data are limited in SIS. Most Red List assessment projects are done in response to conservation needs. For example, Red Lists are used nationally in numerous conservation efforts including: conservation planning; environmental impact assessments; for reporting on the state of a nation’s biodiversity; and to guide the activities of threatened species monitoring programmes. Conservation practitioners involved in each of these activities require Red List data to be readily available in a format that is appropriate and useful to them. Being able to provide users with the correct data requires that it be possible to perform custom queries on Red List databases and in some cases to link the Red List database with other databases. At present, the data extracted from SIS, via the ‘Export working dataset to Access’ function, are inadequate and cumbersome to use and SIS itself does not have custom query functions, nor is it able to link to external datasets. The inability to use data entered into SIS efficiently for local conservation prioritization and decision-making is a possible reason why assessors could be reluctant to put their data into SIS. The lack of this functionality is another hindrance to getting more assessments into SIS and therefore onto the global Red List and thus contributing to the lack of broader regional and taxonomic representation on the list. Solution: Develop SIS to ensure that it is possible to download a selected number of fields into Access or excel format so that it can be easily queried for local conservation requirements.
1.3. SIS is not ideally structured to manage data required for assessing non-mobile species (the majority of species on the planet). For plants, and other species with restricted mobility e.g. invertebrates and amphibians, the basis for the majority of assessments is a map of all known subpopulations, typically derived from specimen data, and captured as point co-ordinates, rather than polygons. Such maps enable the calculation of EOO, AOO and number of locations for criterion B, which is the most often used criterion for these groups. Maintaining spatially georeferenced subpopulation data in a database along with the standard supporting documentation for assessments greatly facilitates ease of assessment and keeping track of the status of each known subpopulation with subsequent assessment updates (e.g. Red List Index species). Currently SIS is not structured to keep track of individual subpopulations, this means that if an assessment is conducted by one group of assessors but later updated by other assessors, there is no ability to know which subpopulations were included in the original assessment. For each update the map of known subpopulations has to be done from first principles. If subpopulations could be listed within SIS it would be far easier to check what the current status of each subpopulation is and to know where new subpopulations have been discovered that need to be included in the updated assessment. If allowances are made to list subpopulations together with latitude/longitude co-ordinates it can facilitate automatic calculation of EOO and AOO and assist in the determination of the number of locations. Furthermore, with spatially referenced subpopulations it is possible to feed priority sites for conservation directly into conservation planning and protected area expansion initiatives. In order to use criterion C it is also necessary to keep track of each subpopulation’s size. SIS only provides functionality to keep track of the total population and the largest subpopulation, but not each population.
Solution: Develop functionality in SIS to list subpopulations including the associated data of subpopulation size, the status (e.g. extinct, uncertain, or extant) and a spatial reference.
2) IUCN system for processing assessments
2.1. Assessment processing and publication for plants is currently too slow to allow the GSPC target 2 to be met by 2020. Currently the majority of assessments are edited and checked by the Red List unit of the Species Programme, however the handful of staff responsible for this are not able to check the high number of assessments submitted annually. For example the East Africa Plant Red List Authority has submitted 1452 plant assessments to the IUCN between 2006 and 2013 for inclusion on the global Red List, thus far only 35 % (511) have been included on the list. In addition, of the 511 published records, 79 (16%) seem to have been published incorrectly with errors in the categories, criteria or both (Luke et al. in prep). Similar errors in assessments, and / or long waiting times for plant assessments to be included on the Red List, have been reported from a number of other Plant Red List Authorities. For plants, the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) has set up Red List Authorities (RLAs) for the majority of regions of the world. These RLAs have the responsibility to conduct and evaluate plant assessments for their respective regions and many of the RLAs have proven that they can produce assessments to IUCN standards and could therefore be authorised to publish their own assessments. The majority of assessments for plants are for non-commercial species that are unlikely to be controversial and therefore checking by the IUCN Red List team is not necessary. It is important to bear in mind that the inclusion of each species on the Red List, even if imperfectly listed, is much more valuable to its individual conservation efforts, than a 100% perfect list which doesn’t include those species. Solution: Allow Red List Authorities to authorise assessments for publication on the Red List without further data checking or processing required.
2.2. Only allowing English assessments onto the Global list is creating a barrier to the inclusion of plants on the Red List. A number of countries, for example, Ecuador, China and Brazil have completed assessments for their plant species using the IUCN 3.1 Categories and Criteria, however these assessments have been done in home languages. Currently the IUCN only publishes assessments completed in English and hence these assessments are not included on the global Red List. While the publication of a species’ conservation status on the global Red List facilitates the channelling of conservation attention and resources towards it, local conservation action is seldom implemented by English-speaking conservation officials. Conservation action happens on the ground, in the species’ native range, where those speaking its native language need to know and understand the issues that need to be addressed. If a species that occurs in a non-English speaking area has an assessment only available in English then the information needed by those individuals most likely to do something about saving it from extinction will not be accessible. We recommend that assessment rationales, as a summary of the assessment, can be translated into English but that the rest of an assessment including the rationale remains in native language. A potential concern of including non-English assessments would be that it could make querying of data on the Red List website difficult. Fortunately most queries are based on categorized data, which already have numerical codes associated with them, e.g. habitats, countries of occurrence and threats. Website queries would need to be restructured to select on the numbers code rather than the text associated with the data being queried. A further concern with having assessments included in different languages is that it makes the review process challenging, for global assessments of particular taxonomic groups where experts conducting or reviewing assessments are spread across the globe it will remain necessary for assessments to remain in English. However, for assessments projects in regions or countries with high numbers of endemic taxa, assessments should be allowed in any language. Solution: Allow assessments in any language onto the Red List and only request that the rationale that should be a summary of the assessment is included in English.
In conclusion, the ideal scenario for completing plant conservation assessments would be to have the IUCN Red List as the preferred system and for them to be published as part of the IUCN Red List. This can only be achieved if appropriate mechanisms are in place and the intention of this document is to draw attention to the specific needs for achieving this objective. At the same time, it is important to establish whether these changes are not possible or feasible so that alternative mechanisms can be put in place to at least quantify the assessments that have been completed and compute the overall status of plants.
Annex 3
Report back from Red List Committee to Plant Sub Committee: Compiled by Domitilla Raimondo and Alan Paton Background: The Red List Committee oversees and guides the work of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) on biodiversity assessments. This includes responsibility for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and advising on the functioning of the Species Information Service (SIS). The Red List Committee includes representatives of the Red List Partnership, the IUCN Species Survival Commission, and the IUCN Global Species Programme, as well as several co-opted members. There are two Red List Committee members who represent plants, Alan Paton representing RBG Kew, a Red List Partner, and Domitilla Raimondo Plant representative from the SSC. Feedback on INF doc from Plant Conservation Sub-committee: The information document prepared by the Plant Conservation Sub-committee on: Recommendations to speed up inclusion of the plants on the IUCN Red List, was presented on May 13th. Our concerns were well received and a working session dedicated to looking at the bottle necks for including plants on the Red List was held that same day. A number of points raised in our INF doc were also dealt with as other parts of the agenda hence we have combined the below feedback to include all decisions made by the Red List Committee relevant to botanists working as part of the IUCN SSC. Decisions made by the Red List Committee:
• Batch importer (request 1.1. of INF doc): The funding for batch import into SIS was approved (request 1.1. of INF doc). The Red List Unit will be employing software development staff within the next 2 months. The programming of SIS to manage batch imports is expected to be ready by December 2014 / January 2015 and may require a further period of testing and refinement before it is fully functional. This new functionality will enable any IUCN-compliant assessments that have been done in external databases, including those done by Brazil, South Africa and assessments done by Kew in the BRAHMS Conservation Assessment module, as well as any others, to be automatically fed into SIS for final review and processing for publication on the IUCN Red List website. The only requirement is that data coming from the external database must follow the defined standards which align with SIS. To check what these are you can contact the SIS manager Ackbar Joolia [email protected]. For any new assessment projects that will take place using external databases the IUCN request that a test is done at an early stage once the first handful of assessments have been completed to check compatibility with SIS.
• Minimum documentation view: (request 1.2 INF doc) The Red List Committee agreed to prioritise the development of a view in SIS that only shows fields required by the minimum documentation standards. This may be a bit more complicated, as there are some dependencies in the requirements and how to implement these may require further thinking e.g. if Criteria A, C1 or E are used in a listing, then the generation length needs to be provided (it is not required for assessments using criteria B, C2 or D). However, the assessments may be done manually or may be done using the criteria calculator, so whether or not the generation length field appears as a required field will require some complex programming to take into account the different scenarios. A version will be completed by Dec 2014, but more complex dependencies may be added later on.
• Language of assessments (request 2.2. of INF doc): After long debate it was decided that the IUCN would accept assessments conducted in the official IUCN languages (English, French and Spanish) as well as in languages of some Megadiverse countries. Submission of assessments in French, Spanish, and Portuguese will be prioritised during the piloting of this process which will take place over the next year or two. Chinese was also agreed to in principle, although IUCN may not quite be ready to implement this in the next few years. Initially non-English assessment will be accommodated within the existing structure of SIS as relevant blocks of text and no additional modifications will be
made to SIS. The assessments will be presented on the IUCN website in their language of production, the use of translation widgets on website is to be explored.
• Dealing with the backlog of plant assessments (INF doc 2.1): Datasets awaiting publication on the IUCN Red List.
The IUCN Red List Unit currently has a large number of plant assessments c. 4,000 that have not been included on the Red List website this is either due to problems with the original assessments or due to the assessments not having been conducted in SIS. Until now the Red List Unit have not always given clear enough feedback to assessors regarding the problems they encounter with assessments, and they have been trying with their limited time and staff capacity to fix the assessments, this is not working. From this point forward assessments not meeting the IUCN supporting information and data standards are to be sent back to assessors soon after they are received with clear indications as to what the problems are. The IUCN Red List Unit will only process high quality plant assessments. A few large plant data sets that require action are: 1) South Africa, 2,800 with the IUCN Red List Unit, c. 5,000 assessments ready for inclusion on the Red List. The main issue with South African assessments is that they have not been done in SIS, in addition the threat and habitat schemes are outdated. Action: South Africa to update assessments to be compatible with new threat and habitat schemes. IUCN Red List Unit to upload these assessments once the batch input function is working. 2) Madagascar, about 2,000 assessments have been submitted to the Red List Unit but they have been submitted in 15 different DEMs and there are many problems both with the supporting data as well as the assignment of the threat category, in addition to a number of duplicate records across the different data files. Action: Bárbara Goettsch from the IUCN Red List Unit has started work on a subset of these assessments to identify the main problems with the assessments. Some initial feedback has already been sent to the Madagascar Plant Specialist Group outlining some of the key issues. The IUCN has been successful in getting funding from the l’Agence Francaise de Development for a project called Integration of knowledge products by IUCN for supporting land-use planning and policy in Madagascar. As part of this project 1,000 Madagascan plant assessments need to be published on the IUCN Red List website by 2016. South Africa has offered to assist with Red List training in Madagascar and with lesson sharing for doing assessments in the megadiverse country context. 3) Cameroon, 264 assessments were submitted by Martin Cheek from Kew. These assessments were compiled by Martin and various colleagues and e-published in the Red Data Book of the Flowering Plants of Cameroon. These assessments had not been reviewed by the relevant Red List Authorities and for many, there is incomplete supporting documentation. The assessments were all returned to Martin Cheek with feedback on the issues, but the intern that Kew had to work on these has since left and so no further progress was made on completing these to resubmit them. Action: Simon Stuart SSC Chair is keen to support getting the Cameroon assessments tidied-up, so is trying to get Jean Michel Onana (co-author of the Cameroon Plant Red Data Book and recently appointed Coordinator of the Central African Plants RLA) to help work on these. 4) East Africa, the East African Plants Red List Authority conduct almost annual assessment workshops and submit batches of assessments to IUCN. The assessments for the first three workshops were done originally in the old DEM, those were imported into SIS. But in most cases they lack the necessary supporting information to be published. The Red List Unit has been trying to work through these as and when time permits to add in the missing data, but access to the literature, etc. makes the work very slow. It would be far better for the RLA to take ownership of these and to complete the accounts themselves. For one workshop, the data was captured in a spreadsheet, this needs to be manually transferred into SIS, but in many cases may be lacking the key information needed to get the assessments finalised for publication. More recently (for the last 2 workshops) the RLA have been capturing the assessment information using Word templates and then entering these into SIS after the workshops. The assessments done this way have been submitted to the Red List Unit and published on the Red List website shortly afterwards. Around 63% of assessments “submitted” to IUCN by the EAPRLA have not been published due to too much of the required supporting
documentation being missing – the RLA Chair and some of the members have repeatedly been informed about this issue, but seem to think that it is solely the Red List Units job to fix this. Action: The Chair of the Southern African Plant Specialist Group will meet with the chair of the East African Plant RLA in July to discuss procedures and standards of assessments and the best way to go forwards for East Africa regarding managing and improving their assessment process to ensure that the assessments are done using SIS or some other compatible software, have the necessary supporting information, and are properly and independently reviewed. 5) Sampled Red List Index for Ferns. 900 assessments have been completed by KEW but are in the DEM format. Action: The IUCN Cambridge Red List Unit will feed these into SIS, but they will require manual cross-walks for the threats and conservation action classification schemes. For assessments of ferns that fall within the jurisdiction of other geographically defined plant RLAs, those RLAs will need to be requested to review these assessments. For example, the dataset include a number of South African ferns and so efforts will be required to ensure these match the existing ferns assessments done for the South African national Red List.
• Including subpopulation data in SIS for plant assessments (request 1.3. INF doc) no progress was made towards this point, Craig Hilton-Taylor did mention that it should be feasible to add subpopulation information into assessments in the format as it appears in the software package RAMAS Red List. There was insufficient time available at the Red List Committee meeting to discuss this point further. It would make sense for this to be discussed further at the Plant Conservation Sub-Committee meeting and for a formal request to be made to the Red List Technical Working Group to consider the incorporation of additional fields in SIS to accommodate this information. Also the PCSC need to make contact with the Invertebrate Conservation Sub-Committee to check if they too have a similar problem in not having fields to capture subpopulation-level information. Craig Hilton-Taylor also indicated that if any subpopulation was of particular conservation concern, that it could be assessed separately as a subpopulation (the Red List Guidelines provide further guidance on this). Many marine species now have multiple subpopulation-level assessments (e.g. 11 for the Leatherback Turtle), also various freshwater fish (e.g. over 100 for the Sock-eye Salmon) and there is an increasing trend to do this.
Other points raised: • The Plants Conservation Sub-Committee (PCSC) to discuss improving communication
between assessment groups (i.e. issue of overlaps in jurisdiction between taxonomic , geographic and thematic groups – some species might fall under six RLAs) and to suggest plan of action for assessments to be prioritised over the next 3 years.
• Partial funding for producing PDFs from Red List accounts published on the Red List website and giving them DOI’s was approved. Red List Assessments will become citable objects and have digital permanency (The IUCN Red List is already registered as an online Journal with an ISSN number).
• IUCN is in discussion with the World Bank about the flagship knowledge products mobilized through IUCN, to explore whether these can be promoted as global public goods (i.e. more open access). This will take place in full consultation with the relevant IUCN Commissions, IUCN Member organizations, and collaborating partners
• A Green list is being discussed: how well are conservation actions impacting on extinction risk and the desired conservation goal. Only a high level framework is being discussed at this stage, but SIS will need to evolve to deal with it.
• NatureServe dashboards: With support from the MacArthur Foundation, NatureServe is establishing a biodiversity indicators dashboard, a web-enabled interactive tool to visualize biodiversity indicators and track the trends of biodiversity and conservation performance at multiple scales across the globe. The dashboard is designed to support (a) monitoring of the success or failure of conservation actions and (b) national development of indicators of progress toward Aichi Targets. There is an initial prototype .
• Up-coming meetings:
o Society for Conservation Biology: International Congress for Conservation Biology 3-6 August 2015 Montpellier; Deadline for symposia likely to be October/November
o World Parks Congress 12-19 November Sydney Australia - early bird registration closes 30 June. We are currently members of IUCN, so get reduced registration fees.
Annex 4
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Annex 5
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Annex 6
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Annex 7
Please consult: http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents but also the following useful links on SIS updates and IUCN Red List Training: http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/sisupdate and http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/red-list-training.
Annex 8
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Annex 9
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Annex 10
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